A Correlational Study of U.S. Tourism Travel Restriction Impacts on Cuba's Gross National Incom

Income inequality and the impacts that tourism generated revenue has on the alleviation of poverty is an important issue facing developing countries such as Cuba and China. This researcher conducted a quantitative correlational examination on the level of impact U.S. travel restrictions had on Cuba's Gross National Income (GNI) per capita. The study design was a comparison of U.S. inbound tourism impacts on Cuba's GNI per capita and how it compared to U.S. inbound tourism influence on China's GNI per capita. The variables of U.S. tourism inflows and GNI per capita by year were analyzed using IBM SPSS 24.0. The years examined for the correlation comparison of U.S tourism inflows into Cuba and China were 1995 through 2015. Analysis of the date showed (1) a moderate positive correlation between the number of U.S. tourism inflows and Cuba's GNI per capita and (2) a strong positive correlation between the number of U.S. tourism inflows and China's GNI per capita. To determine the potential tourism demand of Cuba and China, the researcher utilized a tourism gravity model with and without tourism related policy factors incorporated into the model. A range of 46 years from 1970 through 2015 was used for Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita inputs into the tourism gravity model. The results of the tourism gravity model without policy factors incorporated showed that tourism demand for Cuba was significantly greater than for China in the years from 1980 through 2015 with core tourism demand years from 1990 to 2000. Results with factored policy impacts showed greater tourism demand for China than Cuba. Tourism is a growing economy globally and is becoming an important economic driver for the economy of developing countries. The restructuring of tourism gravity models may help future researchers to contribute to the theoretical background for better empirical models. More research is needed to understand the impacts that tourism policy has on income inequalities and poverty.